little_details

Hi all,

I was in here a few days ago asking about what the swamps and bayous in Louisiana were like, and now I've got another question. If a group of people with the purpose of cataloguing animal movements were wanting to get about a swamp, what kind of boat would they use? They would (i assume) be motoring through the swamp then turning the motor off and floating while they animal-watched. So they'd need a motorboat, but a small one, very shallow on the draft, and only needing to fit four of them, most likely with an outboard motor. And yes, this is set in Louisiana, around south/south-east of New Orleans, and my boatload of naturalists are going deep into the swamp.

My assumption (and what I am still leaning towards) would be something like this, or perhaps a wooden variant thereof. Unfortunately, the only thing I've ever heard those boats being called are "tinnies" which is very Australian and quite inappropriate for my team of American naturalists. I also thought "dinghy", but the evidence on that is equivocal, since they're usually apparently used as tender on yachts. I don't really want to use the generic "(small metal) motorboat".

As far as googling goes, I googled every type of boat you can think of, went through the boat types listed on wikipedia and about five nautical glossaries, hit up UrbanDictionary to see what they translated tinnie into ("runabout" which I am only willing to use pending confirmation from someone reasonably boat savvy, because it seems to me like a runabout is bigger and has more oomph than what I'm after), googled boat listings in Louisiana, and swamp tours (to see what kinds of boats they used), all with very little success.

So my questions are: 1. is this the right type of boat (and if not, what is?) and 2. if it is, what the blazes is it actually CALLED?

Thanks for your help!

Just a quick Francophone question - I'd've posted it to multilingual, but I know this community better, and I'm asking for a cultural explanation as much as a translation.

So! My characters find themselves in France during Bastille Day. (Bastille Day, 1944, to be exact.) What salutations would the townspeople exchange? Just the simple French would be of immense help. I've tried searching for this on google ("bastille day greetings" "bastille day salutations"), but I've mostly gotten links to e-greetings sites, and my browser doesn't support java.

I recently got an idea for a rather intricate story that is partially set in 1925 and 1926 in America.

The state has yet to be determined but most likely they're in a semi-small town. The first question I have is, how likely is it for a family to have a treehouse in their backyard? I know that in the novel The Swiss Family Robinson, published in 1812, the family builds a treehouse, and a large-scale treehouse named the Treetops Hotel was built in 1932. However I've found nothing that could tell me whether or not young children, or even teenagers, would use a treehouse as a sort of club house in the 1920s that was probably built in 1910.

My second question is if a girl got pregnant and had a child in that same era, how would she, and her child be treated? In additon, how would the boy that got her pregnant be treated? Additionally, if they were expected to get married, what would happen if they ddin't?

For treehouses, I've checked Wikipedia and googled 'treehouses 1920', 'kids treehouses 1920' and 'children treehouses 1920' I also used ask.com
For teenage pregnancy I looked on Wikipedia and googled '"teenage pregnancy" 1920'

Thanks so much in advance for any help you can give me!